>on network TV
I don't think we have the same distinction here. BBC2 was introduced as highbrow television in the sixties and by the seventies was showing fairly steamy sex scenes (after 9pm of course), they were highbrow steamy sex scenes (as you would expect). I think our television plays were much more into gritty realism and didn't really shrink from profanity "as long as it was appropriate to the scene". Programme makers from the seventies say that there was a ration of four letter words that had to be eked out over the whole programme. By the mid eighties, with comedy shows like "the Young Ones" they had just about given up.
I mentioned "Sex in the City", in an earlier thread as an example of a programme shown on cable (HBO) in the US and network TV (Channel 4)here, similarly the Sopranos.
In some ways I think people here have grown out of expletives, they are really part of normal speech between consenting adults and in many environments, barely noticed. I'm far more concerned about the increasing levels of violence on programmes like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" which are shown on early evening television.
